She shivered, pushing the thought away.She knew why she’d left it.
Because Dad.Because a good man was slaughtered as he stepped out of a church.Because of a mystery that remained unanswered, but had twisted her life out of recognition.
Close to your heart.
Then she looked again at the drawings.
Mulberries.
And suddenly the room seemed to tilt.
Gabe had been right — not about his medieval saint nonsense, but right about something else.Right that this case, like Cox had warned, was going to cut close to her.Right about Chicago.
Mulberries had been the name of her childhood home — the old clapboard house just outside Lake Forest, Illinois.She hadn’t said the name aloud in years.Her father had chosen it.The old sign had peeled and warped with the Illinois winters, and her mother had gotten a new one, the name carved on a little wooden sign they hung over the mailbox.
She fumbled for her phone, pulled up Google Maps, typed the address.
It came up instantly.
Still there.
1508 Clancy’s Drive.Still calledMulberries.
Her heart thudded once, hard.
The berries.
Four.
The shift in the third image — the crow angled differently, the fruit overworked, emphasized.
A hint.
A message.
A threat.
Or an invitation.
Her stomach turned.
Someone’s life could be at stake.
And that — that was pure Cox.Or whoever worshipped him enough to continue the cycle.To pull her into the killing by referencing her past.To make her culpable by design.
Because he had done that all along — this grotesque performance of making her a "witness."
The past bleeding into the present.
Her life threaded into the narrative without her consent.
Like Gabe had said.Why did she imagine that had stopped?Just because she’d told Cox she didn’t care?He didn’t care that she didn’t care.More to the point, he knew shedidcare.Couldn’t not.Cared, and always would.Was powerless to switch it off.
Cold dread licked the back of her neck.
She grabbed her phone and dialed the FBI’s Chicago field office.
It rang once.Twice.Three times.
